The Girl Who Vanished
The hallway lights flickered once. Then again. Long shadows stretched across the linoleum floors like spilled ink.
Erin Pelkey ran barefoot through the empty corridors of Hillridge High, her breath sharp in her throat, her eyes wide with panic. Her hands were scraped, her pajama pants torn. Her locker had been open when she arrived — filled with things that didn’t belong to her. Photos of strangers. A note in a language she didn’t recognize.
And then the voices started. Whispering. Low and wet. Coming from nowhere and everywhere.
She turned the final corner toward the front doors.
Almost there.
But her foot caught on something. She fell — except she didn’t hit the ground.
Erin Pelkey vanished mid-air.
A soft hiss echoed through the hall. Then nothing.
A Town That Forgets
The next morning, Hillridge High opened its doors like any other Wednesday in October.
Lockers slammed. Bells rang. Teenagers shuffled in, half-asleep, half-scrolling.
No one asked about Erin.
Her teachers marked her absent, then moved on. Her friends laughed in the cafeteria without a single mention of her name.
Even her locker was empty, like it had never been assigned.
Only Harvey Dodd, the night janitor, stood in front of it during first period, a deep frown carved into his face. He scratched his gray beard with a nicotine-stained hand and opened the notebook in his coat pocket.
He scribbled:
#14 – Pelkey, Erin (Grade 11)
Then he closed the book, muttered, “They took another one,” and went back to mopping the floors.
Meet Harvey Dodd, the Janitor Who Remembers
Harvey Dodd had been the night janitor at Hillridge High for over twenty-five years. Before that, he’d fixed fences, served in Desert Storm, and drank more whiskey than he cared to admit.
He liked working alone.
He liked the silence of the halls after dark — even when that silence sometimes whispered.
Hillridge was the kind of Maine town people forgot about. The kind where the newspaper was a week behind, and everyone waved even if they hated you.
It was also the kind of town where things went missing. But not the usual kind — not phones or wallets. Not even people, really.
Kids went missing from memory.
And Harvey was the only one who noticed.
The Missing Names
In his storage closet behind the gym, Harvey kept a shoebox of old student IDs, yearbooks, and crumpled notes. Relics of the kids who had vanished. Not dropped out, not moved away — vanished.
He had names.
Fourteen now.
Erin Pelkey made fourteen.
He’d tried reporting it once — a decade ago, when he noticed the first three gone. The police laughed. The principal suggested retirement. A therapist called it “trauma-driven memory projection.”
But Harvey knew what he saw. He remembered the laughter in the hallways, the field trip permission slips, the soda can Erin always brought for lunch.
He remembered her. And that meant something.
Because whatever was down in the belly of this school — it wanted people not to remember.
Kevin Martell and the Empty Trophy Case
Two nights after Erin vanished, Harvey spotted Kevin Martell, the star quarterback, wandering the halls long after practice. Kevin looked… off. He stared blankly at his own reflection in a trophy case, eyes sunken, skin pale.
Harvey called out.
Kevin didn’t answer. He just turned and walked through the emergency exit that was always locked from the outside.
The next day, the trophy case was missing Kevin’s name. His jersey was gone from the gym. No one mentioned him.
Harvey opened his notebook again:
#15 – Martell, Kevin (Grade 12)
He felt a chill crawl up his spine.
The Sub-Basement That Shouldn’t Exist
That night, Harvey dug into the school’s original blueprints — copies stashed in a file cabinet dating back to 1901.
That’s when he saw it: a sealed sub-basement, marked “Service Tunnels / Boiler Access.” The area hadn’t been in use for over seventy years.
Harvey had never seen an entrance.
Until he looked under his own mop sink.
There, behind the wall of supplies, was a rusted metal hatch. Welded shut. Dusty but real.
He stared at it for a long time, then wrote in his notebook:
“Entry Point?”
And then, just beneath that:
“Whatever’s taking them… lives down there.”
Into the Dark
The following night, Harvey returned with a flashlight, a crowbar, and a flask of bitter courage.
The hatch groaned as it gave way, revealing a narrow staircase swallowed by darkness. He descended slowly, each step creaking beneath his boots.
The air grew colder. Damp. Ancient.
He entered a long-forgotten chamber beneath the school — stone walls, crumbling pipes, and old heating equipment covered in black mold.
And then he saw them.
Backpacks. Shoes. Crayons.
Laid out in rows like offerings. Tags still attached. Names he recognized. Kids he remembered.
He dropped to one knee. His heart thundered.
“Oh God… they’re all here.”
The Takers Reveal Themselves
That’s when the whispers returned. But louder now. Words shaped from breath that didn’t come from lungs.
From the darkness, they emerged — things like silhouettes that had crawled off a child’s drawing and grown teeth. Not monsters in the classical sense. Shadow people. Fluid. Faceless.
And hungry.
They spoke directly into Harvey’s mind.
“You are alone.”
“No one believes you.”
“No one ever remembers what we take.”
Harvey staggered back, flashlight flickering.
“What are you?” he choked.
“We are the Takers. We consume the forgotten. We feast on neglect. On names left behind.”
They circled him.
“You remember too much.”
A Terrible Bargain
Harvey’s hands shook as he opened his notebook and began reading the names aloud.
Each name burned his throat. Each syllable seemed to cut the air like glass.
The Takers recoiled.
“Pelkey, Erin. Martell, Kevin. Lavoie, Trina. Delgado, Nathan.”
The shadows screamed in silence.
But the effort hurt. Harvey felt parts of himself slipping. His daughter’s name. The year his wife died. Gone.
The Takers stopped circling. One came closer.
“A trade.”
“Give us your memories. All of them. And we will return one child to the world.”
Harvey stared at the shadows.
He thought of Erin. Of Kevin. Of the dozens more they would take.
Then he looked at the old kerosene tanks rusting in the corner.
He struck a match.
“No deal.”
Ashes and Silence
The fire gutted the sub-basement.
Flames surged up through old ductwork, through ancient piping, and up into the boiler room. Alarms blared.
The students were evacuated safely. No one was hurt.
No one but Harvey.
They found him unconscious but alive, lying just outside the janitor’s closet.
The Last Page of the Notebook
At Hillridge Regional Hospital, Harvey Dodd awoke to a world scrubbed clean.
The fire was ruled an “equipment malfunction.” The sub-basement? “Doesn’t exist,” said the fire marshal.
When Harvey asked about the kids — Erin, Kevin, Trina — the nurse gave him a pitying look.
He opened his notebook.
Blank.
Every page.
Even his own name was missing.
A Haunting Ending
Two weeks later, Harvey returned to work. They said he’d insisted. Said he didn’t have any family.
He walked the halls of Hillridge High like he’d always belonged there.
Sometimes he paused at a certain locker — one near the water fountain on the east wing. Locker #147.
He’d stare at it, brow furrowed, lips moving slightly.
But then he’d shake his head and keep walking, mop in hand.
Whistling a tune he didn’t remember learning.
Like This Story?
If you enjoyed The Takers, check out more original horror stories right here on Dark Frights.
Share, comment, and let me know which tale you want next.